You can now subscribe to our services, with digital products to follow shortly
When writing about studio news and announcements, I feel it’s useless to simply just announce a new service, or feature, or what have you. There’s little to no value provided to the reader when done like that, except to the few who truly find these new offerings of real interest. As such, I don’t want to use this post to simply describe the new ways you’ll be able to engage with Grand Prix Studio, but also why this shift was made, and why it might be indicative of a larger trend in marketing, tech, and of course the motorsports industry. Skip to the second half of this blog for that part.
About Our Subscription Service Model
Grand Prix Studio is about to venture into completely unknown territory. As of today, November 30th, 2022, we’re launching a subscription service. We may just be the first motorsports centric design studio to offer such a thing. This service does away with project quotes, change orders, and the need to think about what an individual request or project might cost. For a flat monthly rate, you get whatever you need done. It’s really that simple. This service is namely designed for those with consistent or recurring marketing and design needs.
How Subscriptions are Priced
The big questions you all have. Pricing will be unique to each business or individual based on exactly what they require from the studio. That being said, prices will be less expensive than a traditional one-off project as a by-product of the certainty such a model provides to us.
What a Subscription Includes
With our subscription program “in beta” so to speak, to use a tech term, we’re currently offering all of our services through it (that is, every service listed on our service page). Over time, we may niche down. But for now, nothing’s off the table.
Walk Me Through the Subscription Process
As cool as it would be to simply create an account, submit a payment, and instantly have website management or marketing collateral start rolling in, the world isn’t quite there (yet). Here’s how the process actually works.
If you’re interested in a subscription, you can schedule a free one-hour call with us where we’ll discuss in detail exactly what you need done, how we can be as efficient as possible, and ultimately whether such a model is a good fit for your needs. We should also be able to offer over the phone estimates as well.
Important: Subscriptions will be capped at just five users / clients to start. Once we feel we can scale our services beyond that without risking a decline in the quality of our work, we’ll open it up again to more entries. The quality of the studio’s work and client relations are possibly the most important aspects of our studio, and two of the main reasons people love working with us.
About Digital Products (Coming Soon)
Over the past four years of operating, we’ve built dozens of amazing websites, thousands of motorsports sponsorship deck pages, and spent hundreds of hours on the phone / zoom talking about design and marketing strategy. As a result, we’ve built up an extensive library of design “components” and “solutions” so to speak, all of which can easily be re-purposed and re-used at a lower price point than what it initially cost us to build them. Certain products, namely websites, do require some level of service / work from us. However, once they’re set-up, all products can be used independent of our studio.
Digital Products Include:
- Pre-built motorsports sponsorship info deck templates (v1.3)
- Semi-custom Rider / driver website and kits
- Semi-custom race team website and kits
- Essentials Branding Packages
- Strategy & Consulting
Who are these new services and products designed for?
Our digital products are designed mainly for drivers, riders, and small – medium sized racing teams. Larger entities such as racing series, circuits, performance brands, or similar groups are still best served by working directly with us either as a traditional client or through our new subscription service.
When will these products be available?
Over the month of December, 2022, we’ll be launching our digital products. You can join our waitlist to get notified as soon as the first products launch.
Why is Grand Prix Studio now offering these services and products?
I’ll be honest, I was very hesitant to create these new methods of engaging with us. Grand Prix Studio, (or Ikoniqa, if that name is still sticking with you) favors quality over quantity. I feared that our public image of quality design services might take a hit simply by offering a subscription model and products as “cheapness” is sometimes associated with these items.
However, I’m starting to see a shift in the way businesses are executing on marketing objectives. I’ve talked about this before in a blog earlier this year titled “Designing Ourselves out of a Job”. To keep this as short and low level as possible, let me lay out exactly what’s happening. Five years ago, Grand Prix Studio could not exist the way it does today. The tools this studio relies on, especially on the web development and software front, simply did not exist in a manner that designers like me could readily access. They do now, and I’m forever grateful for it.
But there’s a second phase to this. Design solutions are becoming productized and more readily available to the end consumer themselves. More importantly, the actual labor involved in producing quality work is also declining at a pretty fast pace. This means you’ll start to see some of the most pressing pain points get solved for at a lower price first. A motorsports sponsorship deck is a great example of this. The problem of obtaining sponsorship in motorsports is both narrowly defined and widespread. As such, people are now building scalable digital solitons to solve for this.
A step beyond that, which we’re pro-actively solving for, is something like racer / team websites. There’s usually a very common goal alignment within this vertical. With the launch of our digital products (which does includes semi-custom websites), we’re now using previously tailor-made components at scale. Though our library of motorsports web components is propriety, it will inevitably become widely available, as well as easy enough for anyone to assemble and launch on their own.
Vertical Integration
Our studio has been and will always be a place for larger entities such as performance brands, racing series, or larger race teams to collaborate with us in building amazing solutions for their businesses. At the end of the day though, we're a digital solutions business that specializes in motorsports. Our aim is to be able to help those at nearly all levels within motorsports, not just the big players. Our move into the digital product space in particular is our way of becoming more vertically integrated in the motorsports industry, and our subscription service is our way of providing all parties a more efficient route to access our services at all levels.
Don't Underestimate Strategy
What a lot of people miss in the design world, or for that matter the motorsports world, is that marketing and design work should be outcome driven. To steal the studio’s own copy from the service page “You don't need a new website, you need a way for racers to easily discover and join your race team. You don't need to develop your brand identity, you need people to clearly recognize your value and offerings as pro racing series. You don't need marketing and design work, you need to sell more of your racing performance products to your target audience. What is strategy then? Strategy is about bringing clarity to your next move and setting you on the right path through rigorous dialog and discussion about exactly what you're aiming to achieve, and how we can help you best meet your goals.”
At the end of the day, that’s truly what I want for anyone who works with us. Can we find the best tool for you? Is that tool something we even have? And can we implement it effectively? In many scenarios, the solution does not require highly bespoke work from us. It actually requires a fairly straightforward digital solution(s). As such, digital products and a subscription service have joined the grid.
Info Recap
If you’re interested in our subscription service, you can schedule a free one hour call, or inquire via email
If you’re interested in future products of ours, you can join our waitlist.
Last (and least), welcome to the new Grand Prix Studio website! We hope the improved user interface is as nice to use as it is to look at! (as it should be).
